In the last two weeks, I learned Korean proverbs (속담) and reviewed my understanding of final consonants (받침). In the first week, I went through 47 most commonly used, or at least known, proverbs. There were a few proverbs that I have heard of before and there were also some proverbs that I surprisingly knew the meaning of. The literal meaning of the phrases was easy to understand, however, it was the figurative language that confused me a little. When I found myself already knowing the proverb meaning, I was proud that I did. When I didn’t, I was curious to understand the meaning. For example, “남의 떡이 더 커 보인다" was a proverb I already knew the meaning of. Literally, the phrase says “another person’s rice cake looks bigger” and it holds the same meaning as the widely used “ the grass is greener on the other side”. A proverb both Tommy and I had a difficult time with was “등잔 밑이 어둡다" (“it’s dark under the lamp”). This proverb is indicating that the most important thing is right in front of you, “right under your nose”. This weekly meeting was really fun and filled with laughter because we tried to guess the meaning of the proverbs and Somyung joined the session. My weekly meetings with Tommy and our language partner, Jimin, are always enjoyable and productive because we always engage in the learning process while adding some form of fun, like videos, to support our learning.
I also reviewed the rules of final consonants (I didn’t even know 받침 was “final consonant” in English) to strengthen my spelling skills with Jenna and her group (Vivian and Somyung). My meeting with Jimin got canceled. At the second weekly meeting with Jenna, we were all given a sheet of the different rules and corresponding examples. Although I learned how to speak the language, spelling (specifically 받침) has always been a difficult aspect of Korean. Being able to learn the different rules and when to apply them formally, is helping me think about the ways I type Korean when speaking to my family members and friends. In addition to single final consonants, there is something called double final consonants. These are the rules that I always have difficulty in spelling because, in speech, the second final consonant carries over to the next syllable. An easy example is the word “앉아" meaning sit. The first syllable has both “ㄴ” and “ㅈ”. The “ㅈ” however, is not pronounced with the rest of the syllable. Instead, it substitutes the silent “ㅇ” consonant. Therefore, the pronunciation is “안자” (which means something else).
To put the material learned into practice, I plan to practice using a few of the proverbs I learned in my daily Korean speaking. The most applicable proverbs I would like to use are: “시작이 반이다”, “가랑비에 옷 젖는 줄 모른다”, and “하늘이 무너져도 솟아날 구멍이 있다". Once I can naturally and easily incorporate these proverbs into my thinking, speaking, and/or writing, I think I can measure whether or not I learned something new. In addition, the issue with 받침 is purely practicing with the spelling of words I use daily. Because I am aware of this, I asked my parents to look over my spelling when I used Korean with them over text and I will also work to text using proper Korean instead of text-language, which allows room for mistakes masked as accents/tones.
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